Calibrate the extruder

Proper calibration of your extruder is essential to optimize print quality. This guide will walk you through the entire process from start to finish. First we want to find out how much filament is fed to the hot end (regardless of values such as extrusion width, extrusion multiplier, filament diameter, etc.). For all types of extruders, you should follow the steps below to calibrate the extruder steps / mm.

Extruder steps / mm calibration

In order to calibrate the extruder steps / mm, we instruct the 3D-printer to extrude 100 mm filament. Then we measure how much filament has been extruded and whether it is actually 100 mm. Measurement: First measure 120 mm filament from where it gets into your extruder and mark it with a pen or marker. This will be the reference point. Now heat your hotend to normal printing temperature and make sure the nozzle is over the bed where it can freely extrude the filament. Now extrude 100 mm filament with the command G1 E100 F60 . When your printer has extruded the 100mm, measure the distance between the point you marked before starting and the point where the filament enters the extruder. If this is exactly 20 mm, congratulations! Your extruder steps / mm are perfectly calibrated. If it is more or less than 20 mm, it means that your printer is over or under extruded. This problem can be easily solved.

The fine tuning

To calculate the new steps / mm, we need to know the existing steps / mm and the under / over extrusion rate. Send the command M92 to your 3D printer to get the existing values for steps / mm. This command shows the current steps / mm for all axes that are saved in your 3D printer. That then sees e.g. so from steps / mm: X: 80.430, Y: 80.430, Z: 790.600, E: 1151.000 We only need the E value here.

Now we have to do some math

We need to find out how much filament your 3D printer actually extruded. This is calculated from: 120 mm - remaining filament distance (measured in the previous step). For me that was 120 - 27 = 93, for example. So my 3d printer only extruded 93 mm when I asked it to extrude 100 mm - that's 7% under extrusion! In order to calculate the new, correct extruder steps / mm, we carry out the following calculations. (Desired extruded filament / actually extruded filament = correction multiplier) in my case that would be 100/93 = 1.075 Next we calculate the E-steps (correction multiplier × original extruder steps / mm = calibrated extruder steps / mm) 1.075 × 1151 = 1237.325 steps (Depending on the extruder used, this value can be much smaller) These are our new extruder steps / mm! You can now save this value in your 3D printer, depending on the printer, the command: M92 E***.* (replace the * with your calculated extruder steps) followed by the command M500 to save the data permanently in the EEPROM. With some systems you have to enter this value in the configuration file of the 3D printer and save it. Finally, we test that the extruder is correctly calibrated, measure another 120 mm filament, mark this again and then extrude 100 mm. Now exactly 20 mm should remain. If not, try the above steps again.